Matt McCall's mentor at Florida, Billy Donovan, fondly recalled a number of memorable battles with the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga when he was the basketball coach at Marshall from 1994 to 1996.
It's not very likely that UTC fans remembers those memories as fondly.
"I don't think they liked him too much," McCall said Monday afternoon, having talked to Donovan a few hours prior.
The two programs will renew a once-bitter rivalry tonight at 7 at McKenzie Arena. The Mocs lead the all-time series 28-19, with five of those games coming in March in Southern Conference tournaments. The last of those was the 1997 tournament final, won by UTC on a Chris Mims putback with three seconds to play.
The Mocs went from there to the Sweet 16 of the NCAA tournament.
The programs haven't met since 2010, when UTC won by a point in Huntingdon, W.Va. Not many current players know much about the one-time rivalry.
"Marshall is a good team," point guard Greg Pryor said. "They're going to come in here, try to play a fast pace, but we can't go in thinking this is a rivalry game, or to play for our fans because it's a rivalry game. We have to play our style of basketball and stay focused."
Defense has ruled the Mocs' current three-game win streak, as they've held Kennesaw State, Coastal Carolina and Louisiana-Monroe to an average of 58.3 points per game on 42 percent shooting. McCall calls it the "best since he's been here," attributing the return of Casey Jones from injury as well as the move of Johnathan Burroughs-Cook to a primary on-ball defender.
With the Mocs' length coming into the season, McCall thought they were capable of being above average defensively. They're trending in that direction.
"I'm just trying to lock in in practice," Burroughs-Cook said. "The scout team does a good job of preparing us for the best players, what they like to do and their actions. When they come in and work on it so good, it comes second-hand to me."
Pryor admitted he hadn't heard of the rivalry until McCall mentioned it after Saturday's win over Louisiana-Monroe, but the second-year coach was eager to renew the matchup in an attempt to drum up excitement around the program.
"Hopefully bringing an opponent like this in here, more fans will come out," McCall said. "As much success as this team has had - and they've had an enormous amount the last two, three years - this group needs to be celebrated, and they deserve to play in front of a great crowd every single night.
"They could have left and didn't, and to me that says a lot about them as people, and we need to get behind this team and support them."
Contact Gene Henley at ghenley@timesfreepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @genehenleytfp.